


the space between stars (is full of hidden light)

by CherFleur



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV), 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Genre: A gift for Mya, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Culture building, Gen, M/M, Mentions of Slavery, Thanks Discord I hate it, world building
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:30:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25230160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherFleur/pseuds/CherFleur
Summary: Dynasties rise and fall, and people with them.The Force wills many things, and the people who follow this will do what they must. The heart is a heavy burden, but each life saved and smile well received lightens it just a little more.
Relationships: (eventual) Wēn Xù (Módào Zǔshī)/Jon Antilles
Comments: 3
Kudos: 28





	the space between stars (is full of hidden light)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlueSapphire718](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueSapphire718/gifts).



> So, I built a lot of stuff for this that might never actually make it into this. So.
> 
> Happy bday Mya!

It was undisputed that Mandalore and its planets were the most well known of the civilized places in the Outer Rim. They were a singular power that had become the near sole focus of Republic planets attention in the Outer Rim.

That didn’t mean that they were the _only_ stable civilization in the Outer Rim, however.

The planet Qishan was the first of five in the Huànxǐng system, the capital planet once upon a time. The second planet was Lanling, third Yunmeng, fourth Qinghe, and fifth Gusu.

While the system itself wasn’t particularly wealthy in the eyes of the republic – no highly desired resources – there was often conflict within. The last planetary war between the people, the Rén, had been nearly a century before, and one of the Sects, the Wen, a subspecies of the Rén, had almost gone extinct.

This had been revealed to be a plot of the Jin, another subspecies of the Rén, in a bid for power as their Chief Cultivator, the one who oversaw the system in entirety. They were born of the second planet, and had sought to use subterfuge to take political power from the other Sects.

The Jiang of the third planet had helped to quell this uprising with the aid of the Nie of the fourth, the first planet Qishan still in disarray, lacking clear leadership. The Lan of Gusu, the fifth planet, had been recovering still from taking refugees, a number of them from out of the system.

Infighting on the first planet continued, however, even if it did not spread to the other Sects, the remnants of the Wen struggling amongst themselves.

Until now, that is.

Wen Yuan had been formally adopted by the Lan after the end of the Sunshot Campaign, the war that had nearly exterminated his people. He had been Lan Sizhui for years when his first father, Wei Wuxian previously of the Jiang planet of Yunmeng, had been resurrected, schemes uncovered, and his Wen characteristics finally began bloom with maturity.

From his now freed Uncle Wen Ning, who had been prisoner to the Jin of Lanling for over a decade, being experimented on, he had learned how to hide his reflective eyes and keep his new claws trimmed. From his second father, Lan Wangji of Gusu, he learned how to use the Lan cultivation methods, though they were a struggle for someone not born of them.

He would never perfect them the way that his best friend, Lan Jingyi could, simply because of the physical differences between the Lan and the Wen. He was not like Jin Ling, who could do both Jiang water cultivation as well as Jin air, perfectly balanced by impeccable breeding and training.

Wen Yuan did not have the additional vocal cords or the expanded diaphragm. He did not have the extra joint in his fingers to play longer and more complicated pieces on his guqin.

So when he had the chance to learn of who he was, to learn what he could _be,_ he jumped on it. Wen Ning was a gentle soul who had known him when he was small and grieved him when he’d thought him slaughtered with other refugees. The man was hesitant to answer his questions but freely did so, about their Sects cultivation – centered around fire and healing – as well as the family they’d once had. He learned that the people of Qishan were trying to find someone who was worthy enough of the ancient Wen relics to hold the title of Sect Leader.

He learned that they were dying without it, the world burning with lawlessness, with only a few pockets of struggling civility.

He learned that _he_ could help them. That he was a close enough relation to the ruling family that he could be recognized by the relics. That Wen Ning could not for the way he had been resurrected after his murder at the hands of the Jin, his golden core too changed.

Long and hard he argued with his fathers about leaving the sanctuary of Gusu – which had become more and more hostile the more Wen their Sizhui looked as he grew – to help save Qishan. Both of them wished to protect him, he knew, but he also knew that if they did that, it would just be another Sect imposing their will on the Wen. That there would never be peace, and someday his birth planet would be full of only ghosts.

So he had begged and pleaded until finally he had told them that he was leaving to do this, to be someone who helped no matter the difficulties, just like his fathers. That they could see him off with resources or they could wait for news of him.

Saying goodbye to them in the spaceport was one of the most difficult things he’d ever done, but he had Uncle Ning at his side willing to help him.

Truly, it was like coming _home_.

Gusu had always been terribly cold to him, he’d worn thermally regulated underlayers in his robes and simply assumed that he was sensitive to the cold of the mountainous region. There were more temperate areas of Gusu, but in the Cloud Recesses, that temple in which he’d mostly been raised, there were glaciers and often snowfall.

Qishan was perfectly temperate in comparison, and he had immediately changed out of his Lan temperature regulatory robes for Wen weaves. The air itself – filled with gasses that the other Sects could withstand but not _thrive_ breathing – felt less weighty in his chest. As if he was finally able to take a full breath for the first time he could remember.

Considering what Uncle Ning told him, it was highly likely that it would take some therapies for his lungs to finish developing as they should. Being taken from their atmosphere so young had hindered some of his physical development, which was why it had taken so long for him to show his traits.

Sizhui knew that his father couldn’t have known. All the Sects tended to hoard medical information, and the Wen had been no different.

That was something he hoped to change, taking deep breathes of the thick, nutritious air of Qishan. No child of mixed heritage – or simply displaced – should have to suffer a lack of proper healthcare because of ancient suspicion.

It took a year of campaigning, of helping rebuild villages and taking down greedy self-appointed ‘Lords’ to become recognized by the people. It took two for him to become skilled enough in Wen cultivation that he didn’t always need his Uncle to come to his rescue. To be recognized by the ornamentation in his hair and the red gold of his eyes in the ever twilight of Qishan, so much easier to see in than the brightness of Gusu.

Three, for people to come to him seeking answers to problems they had and disagreements, to watch over the growth of tentative peace.

It took five, and then he sat in the throne of the Nightless City, accepted by the ancestral fires and the kyber archway that glimmered in the light of the gaseous fires and lava that slid naturally through. His people had put him there, had prayed at the gates of the city and at their altars at home that their ancestors might except Wen Sizhui as the new Wen Sect Leader to unite Qishan once again.

He didn’t want to fail them.

Six month later, Nie Huaisang the Ren representative in the Republic Senate, told all the Sect Leaders that war was very likely on the horizon. Interplanetary and all encompassing, though he couldn’t quite figure out _where_ it would come from other than the Banking Clans.

Each Sect had a year long rotation of sending a representative to the Senate, and one Sect Leader needed to be present at all times. To back the interests of the Huànxǐng system with true authority. It had been agreed when Sizhui had taken his seat as Wen Sect Leader to rebuild Qishan’s infrastructure that he would be out of rotation until things settled.

In the Outer Rim as they were, without the resources that most Republic planets would desire, they were rarely bothered by the conflicts within the Core and Mid.

This was not so, when he started to get reports of problems with slaver raids and people disappearing. In the past this had been an issue, but they’d had the military force and ability to drive off any slavers on their own. Qishan was lacking in this however, because the previous Jin dynasty had stolen from them. Jin Ling was doing amends as best he could, but he was also struggling to run an entire Sect full of potential poison.

So it was inevitable that they struggled, that the waves grew stronger and the people as well to stand up to these new atrocities. When he learned what it was that the slavers were doing with their people he cried, the empty husks that they were leaving behind praying for death.

It in one of these times, but now he was leaned against the kyber archway with blood on his face and Separatists at his door.

The other Sects were blockaded from reaching Qishan by a Separatist fleet. He had multiple incoming signals from his fathers on the comms, Jin Ling kept sending him messages and Nie Huaisang had snuck some of his Disciples into the palace.

They were all fighting with Wen Ning to prevent the droids from getting into the main section of the palace, and many civilians were in bunkers hiding. The military force of Qishan was still practically nonexistent at this point, and Wen Sizhui didn’t know how to protect these people. Not from outside forces when he’d been working on building them up from the last conflict.

Leaned against the kyber arc that had allowed him to walk through it and take a seat upon the throne of Qishan and bathe in the ancestral fire, he prayed.

_Please, help. Someone. Please protect the Wen._

And the throne room burst into flames.

~*~

Wen Xu had been dead for nearly a century, but he’d stuck around to watch over what was left of his people for a time. After falling to Nie Mingjue in battle – an honorable death – he had simply been waiting for his father to lose to his own arrogance.

After the first couple decades, however, it was too heartbreaking to watch them fall from grace and into starving, rabid survivors. His people, his Wen, had always been tough and adaptable, but to see them use it in such a way against their _own…_ well.

It had broken his heart apart a little, and so he’d turned away to join with the Heavens until he heard a child calling out for help. Cultivators were connected in ways that the Core worlds and the Republic didn’t care to understand.

The Jedi had once had a temple on each of the occupied planets within Huànxǐng system, had attempted to learn as the cultivators did. Their use of the ‘Force’ was what they used, that energy which they filtered through their golden cores, that which was flavored by evolution and careful training. These Temples had long since fallen out of use, now maintained out of respect for those who had once learned beside them.

The concept of joining with the Heavens, the Force, was one they had all agreed upon, no matter the cultural divides, and Wen Xu had intended to do that. To become a speck of stardust and potential for a future he could no longer stand to watch over unable to change.

And then.

This child called for him, for his help, pulling him out of the calm flow he remembered from long Sect meetings and hiding from parents with Xichen and Mingjue. Of carrying Ning around on his shoulders and dumping flower petals on Qing, or wresting with Chao.

This child called for him, and asked for him to take up his sword for the people he had so loved when alive and… and he could do nothing but answer.

Stepping out of Heavens Doorway, at the Behest of ruler of the Seat of Fire, Wen Xu breathed air for the first time in a long while. Behind him, was a child he did not know, but at the main gates, he could sense Wen Ning and the shadows that bound him to physical form.

Briefly in the Between he had held his little cousin’s spirit, had comforted him in death, before his benefactor had brought him back to life.

When he turned to look at the bloodied, wide eyed young man who had cried for help, he watched tears run out of wide startled eyes and over thin cheeks. The way boy was dressed not in the opulent robes one would expect of a puppet ruler – usually the case with one so young – but in battle robes with strategic armor plating to cover his golden core and organs.

“Stay here, Sect Leader,” the familiar weight of his sword calling to him from elsewhere in the palace. Ah, at least no one had tried to melt it down for scrap. “I will defend the keep.”

“Wait, how – _who_ are you?”

“I am Wen Xu,” he said as he pushed open familiar doors. “And by your will, I will protect the Wen.”

He’d died for them, and apparently, as long as the Heavens deemed it necessary, he would live for them as well.


End file.
